


A Kind of Parasite

by BuzzCat



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Sad Ending, So much angst, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 16:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8063710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuzzCat/pseuds/BuzzCat
Summary: When the Doctor notices something off with Donna, he drags her to medical and does a quick check-up. What he discovers is a discovery they can never recover from.





	

“Must be some sort of parasite,” said the Doctor, moving the stethoscope around on Donna’s abdomen. She watched him in trepidation; they’d certainly been to enough alien planets and eaten enough strange things that an alien virus wasn’t totally outside the realm of possibility. The Doctor tapped at a part of her abdomen, listening intently for whatever he was supposed to hear. He stared into space and for a moment, Donna though she saw his eyes glaze over. He was frozen, then his eyes shut and he placed a hand atop her shirt toward the bottom of her abdomen. Donna’s frowned,

“What is it? Do you know what it is?”

The Doctor’s eyes opened, seeming sad. He stepped back and collapsed into a chair against the wall. He looked up at her as Donna sat up on the table. She was sure it was something bad. Normally you couldn’t get the Doctor to stop talking, not with anything she’d yet seen in the universe. Apparently, she was about to see something new. He looked, not quite distressed, but resigned. Resigned to some terrible impending thing that even he knew there was no solution for. She slid off the table and crouched in front of him, a hand on his knee,

“Doctor, what is it?” He slowly slid his eyes over to her, a bitter frown hanging on his mouth,

“There is something inside you.”

“What is it? Is it a parasite?”

“Of a kind.” He replied. He was scaring Donna now; she’d never seen him look this resignedly bitter. She was starting to get an Oncoming Storm vibe and instead of making her roll her eyes, it made her afraid. She swallowed and couldn’t quite make eye contact with him as she asked,

“What’s going to happen to me?” The Doctor looked her in the eye,

“It’s going to change your life.”

“Well, can’t you just get it out?” she asked. He sighed deeply, the kind that rattled his bones and made him sound each of his nine hundred years, and Donna felt her nerves jumping. The Doctor covered her hand on his knee and looked her in the eye as he said with a sigh,

“I’m so sorry. You’re pregnant.” Donna stood up, taking a few steps back from him. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, of all the diagnoses that ended with her dead in weeks, those were two words she had not expected to hear.

“What?”

“You’re pregnant. With a half-human half-Time Lord fetus.”

“But, but you’re an alien! Aren’t there laws against this?” railed Donna. The Doctor watched her, even as she yelled, put a hand to her abdomen. She couldn’t hear the heartbeat he had, couldn’t feel the burgeoning Time Lord consciousness, but when he said it he knew she felt it. Donna squared her shoulders, putting her own shock on the back burner, “So now what.”

“I don’t know.” He said, slowly standing. He looked around the medical room, “Hope for the best, I suppose.”

Donna snorted, “’Hope for the best’? Blimey, I’ve heard better plans from you when we’re facing certain death. How is that a plan?”

“What do you expect, Donna?” he said, bearing around to face her with his teeth bared. He was angry, “You’re pregnant with a Time Lord. As it grows, it will burn your mind. Human beings aren’t meant to be compatible with Time Lords. By all rights, this shouldn’t even exist! But it will take your mind and you will lose yourself until you either die or become a husk, a vague impression of you.” He reached forward to cup her cheek, wiping a tear away that had escaped her eye as she watched him. The Doctor kissed her forehead, and when she caught his gaze, he looked determined with a stony set to his face, “And I won’t allow that.” He leaped into action, rummaging through cupboards. Donna took a second to realize what she’d just heard,

“What? You won’t _allow_ it? And who the hell put you in charge?”

“Me! Doctor, Time Lord, yeah! I’m in charge and I’m going to save your life.”

“Donna, human, no! I’m all for saving my life, but find another solution aside from abortion.”

“Donna! Did you not hear me? That thing is going to kill you!”

“This thing is my child and you can just keep your alien tech the hell away from it!” Donna yelled. The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, coming around the console to seize her wrists,

“Donna, if you want to have a child, there are other ways. Better ways. Ways where you actually live to _see_ your child.”

“Yeah, but those ways won’t be your kid, will they? No matter how that happens, any child between you and me is going to be half and half.”

“Why would you have my kid?” the Doctor asked. Donna went quiet at that, fiddling with the thread on her sweater. She looked up at him,

“Doctor, I wanted to be a mother all my life. Get married, have kids, grow old. And I understand that I can’t have most of that; I can’t have that life and this life too. So I understand if you want to,” she took a steadying breath and the Doctor saw tears at the corner of her eyes, “to drop me back at home. Let me stick around until it’s a hazard and then leave. But let me have until then. I won’t ask you to let me have this child, because that’s going to happen, whether you agree or not. I won’t force you to be a father, but I want to be a mother.” He looked at her with a soft gaze, putting his hand on her cheek. Then, his face hardened and he stood up so fast Donna had to take a few steps back. He was a whirlwind around the medbay,

“You humans! Sometimes you’re so brilliant, amazing, and you are. But then, you do this! You are committing suicide, Donna! This will kill you! You can’t do that, not to me. You can’t die on me, I need you.”

“And I need you, but I also need this child and so help me Doctor, you cannot take that away from me.” Donna stalked out, not looking back at him. The Doctor made to run after her but the TARDIS closed the doors in his face, refusing to open them until Donna was out of his sight. He slumped against the glass of the door. She was going to _die_ , why couldn’t she see that? How could she make her peace, just like that? Donna was many things, but she was not one to go quietly into that good night. Donna was a fighter, for any cause against any one. How could she just be okay with this, dying for someone else? Even as he wondered at her choices though, he knew he wanted that baby as well. He hadn’t had a family, a proper family, in so long he’d almost forgotten how exciting it could be. Teaching a child, holding them, watching them learn about the world. He wanted to badly, so deeply in the very core of his person, to love that child that by all rights shouldn’t even exist. But he also knew that, despite Donna’s condition, this baby was just as theoretical as any other. No scenario could play out that would result in it ever breathing fresh air, ever seeing light. Donna would die before that happened, her body just giving up from trying to support a life it biologically could not. The Doctor knew he had already lost them both.

 

Meanwhile, down the hall, Donna lay in bed sobbing. She honestly wasn’t even totally clear on why she was crying. She had her baby with the man she lo—her best friend. She was going to be a mother, a goal Donna had been almost certain she’d never achieve. But here she was, pregnant. But then again, the Doctor hated this, hated it. And she was going to die. In...Donna did the math…seven months, she would be dead. If it went that long. Then again, maybe Time Lord pregnancies were different. And the Doctor hated her.

Donna’s sobs came harder.

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the day.

The next week was tense between them. They stopped less, the TARDIS mainly flying without landing. They saw each other at meals, usually by accident. It never failed though that once they were in the same room, the Doctor would leave ten minutes later, muttering in passing about fixing some navigation tool Donna is fairly certain he broke on purpose.

Finally, a week and a half after the Doctor told her, Donna woke up resolved. She refused to put up with this anymore. She dressed and went to knock on the Doctor’s door. He was slow to open it, fixing on a megawatt smile Donna saw practically cracking before her very eyes. She put her hands on her hips,

“Alright, Spaceman. You’ve had ten days to come to terms with this,” she gestured at her abdomen, “Thoughts?” she said. The Doctor crumpled a bit, his straight posture sagging,

“Donna, I can’t choose between you and our child.”

“That’s the wizard thing about this. You don’t have to. Either you get both or you get neither.”

“No I don’t, Donna.” The Doctor was a little annoyed now; why was it so difficult for her to see this? “Either I get you or I get nothing.”

“It’s not nothing!” Donna said, indignant. The Doctor moved to grab her elbows in his hands but Donna stepped back just a tiny bit, just far enough that he couldn’t touch her. His hands slowly fell to his sides and Donna could almost see him fighting the need to pace,

“Donna, there is no possible outcome in which this child exists. There are only two options: Either we have to give it up, or you continue being pregnant and eventually die. If you die, it will die with you. There is no possible outcome in which this child lives. You biologically cannot hold a Time Lord baby in you.”

“So there is no way, no possible way on Earth or any other planet that you could ever be okay with this pregnancy?”

The Doctor said nothing. Donna felt something crack within her, her faith and trust in the Doctor and whatever hope she had left, cracked slowly until is disintegrated into dust. She stepped back,

“Well, I guess that settles it.”

“Thank you, Donna. We can—“

“You can drop me back home just as soon as I’ve packed.”

 

Considering how long she had lived on the TARDIS, the way it felt like home almost more than anywhere else she’d been, it was amazing how quickly she was able to pack. It took her the better part of the day to gather her clothes, her books, and everything else together but by dinner time in Chiswick, her suitcases were by the door, piled together. She could see her mum and Gramps inside the kitchen, doing dinner. The Doctor stood in the doorway of the TARDIS with her. He looked so sad that Donna got one look at his face and couldn’t look again.

“Please don’t do this. Don’t go,” he whispered. Donna took a deep breath and forced herself to meet his gaze, ignoring the way her heart broke at the pain in his eyes,

“I have to. I can’t make you watch me die and you won’t give up on me giving it up, I know you won’t,” Donna said. She was right, he knew she was. If she stayed, he would never stop asking her to give it up, even as it broke his hearts to think of it. Donna leaned in and kissed his chin, “I love you. I won’t stop loving you.”

“I love you too,” the Doctor said quietly. They both ignored the tears in Donna’s eyes and the ones streaking down the Doctor’s face. He helped her pile her suitcases on the sidewalk, smiling bitterly as he remembered the day she’d first come aboard the TARDIS, going on about the Planet of Hats. The hatbox now held mementos from their travels, pictures they’d had locals take and ticket stubs from shows they’d gone to. Not that the Doctor knew that. Soon everything was out and all that was left was to say good-bye. They faced each other and each had tears freely flowing, but neither moved to wipe them away. There were so many words between them, both what they had said and what they hadn’t, but in this moment, there was nothing else to say. He nodded at her and she at him. He closed the door and Donna walked up to ring the doorbell. He didn’t fly away until she was inside, and he knew in that moment it was the last he’d see of Donna Noble.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to continue this, let me know, because I'm done with it. Glad you enjoyed it!


End file.
